A technical SEO audit is a systematic review of your website’s infrastructure to identify issues that are preventing search engines from crawling, indexing, or ranking your pages effectively. Done properly, it produces a prioritised list of fixes ordered by impact — so you address the problems that are costing you the most rankings first.
This guide walks through the full audit process with a practical checklist you can apply to any SA business website.
Before You Start: Set Up Your Tools
You will need Google Search Console (free, essential) and at least one crawling tool. Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a free version that handles up to 500 URLs, which covers most SA SME websites. For larger sites, a paid plan or a platform like Ahrefs Site Audit is more efficient.
Connect Google Search Console to your domain if you have not already, and verify ownership. Give the property a few days to accumulate data if it is newly set up — the Coverage and Performance reports are your primary diagnostic tools.
Phase 1: Crawlability
Start with a Screaming Frog crawl of your entire domain. This simulates how Googlebot sees your site and surfaces crawling issues immediately.
Check 1 — Robots.txt. Visit yourdomain.co.za/robots.txt and read through it manually. Ensure it is not blocking any important directories or pages with “Disallow” rules. Common problem: a developer blocked the entire site with “Disallow: /” during a staging environment setup and never reverted the change in production.
Check 2 — XML Sitemap. Locate your sitemap (usually at yourdomain.co.za/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.co.za/sitemap_index.xml). Submit it to Google Search Console if it is not already submitted. Verify that it contains all important pages and excludes noindex pages, admin URLs, and duplicate versions.
Check 3 — Crawl depth. In Screaming Frog, check the crawl depth distribution. Any important pages at depth 4 or greater should be restructured or given additional internal links to bring them closer to the surface.
Check 4 — Broken internal links. Filter Screaming Frog results for 4xx responses (404 errors). Fix broken internal links either by updating the link to point to the correct URL or by adding a 301 redirect from the old URL to the correct destination.
Phase 2: Indexation
Check 5 — Indexed pages. In Google Search Console, go to Coverage → Indexed. Cross-reference the number of indexed pages against the number of important pages on your site. If significantly fewer pages are indexed than exist on the site, investigate why.
Check 6 — Excluded pages. Review the Coverage report’s “Excluded” tab. Common exclusion reasons include “noindex” tags, “crawled but not currently indexed” (Google crawled the page but chose not to index it — usually signals thin or low-quality content), and “duplicate without canonical tag.”
Check 7 — Noindex tags. In Screaming Frog, filter for pages with “noindex” in the meta robots tag. Confirm that every noindexed page is intentionally excluded and that no important pages are accidentally noindexed.
Check 8 — Canonical tags. Check that every page has a self-referencing canonical tag. Confirm that no canonical tags point to incorrect URLs. Look for pages with conflicting canonical signals — such as a canonical pointing to URL A while a redirect sends users to URL B.
Phase 3: Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
Check 9 — PageSpeed Insights. Run your homepage, your most important service page, and your top-traffic blog post through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Note the mobile scores specifically (Google uses mobile-first indexing). Any score below 50 on mobile warrants immediate attention.
Check 10 — Core Web Vitals in Search Console. Go to the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. This shows real-world LCP, INP, and CLS data for your site, categorised as Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor. URLs flagged as “Poor” should be prioritised for technical fixes.
Check 11 — Image sizes. In Screaming Frog, check the Images tab and sort by file size. Any image above 200KB should be compressed. Images above 1MB are unacceptable for a production website serving SA mobile users.
Phase 4: HTTPS and Security
Check 12 — HTTPS across all pages. Run a full crawl in Screaming Frog and filter for any HTTP (not HTTPS) URLs. Every page should be serving over HTTPS.
Check 13 — Mixed content. Check for pages that load over HTTPS but call external resources (images, scripts, stylesheets) over HTTP. This causes browser security warnings and can suppress rankings.
Check 14 — SSL certificate validity. Visit your site and check the padlock icon in the browser address bar. Ensure the certificate is valid, not expired, and covers your full domain including www and non-www versions.
Phase 5: Mobile Usability
Check 15 — Mobile Usability report in Search Console. This report flags specific mobile usability issues — text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, content wider than the screen. Resolve any flagged URLs.
Check 16 — Manual mobile test. Open your homepage and key service pages on an actual mobile device (or use Chrome’s DevTools mobile simulation). Check that all navigation works, forms are functional, and content displays correctly.
Phase 6: Structured Data
Check 17 — Schema implementation. Use Google’s Rich Results Test on your homepage, a service page, and a blog post. Check for valid schema markup and fix any errors flagged.
Check 18 — LocalBusiness schema. Confirm that your business’s NAP information is accurately marked up with LocalBusiness schema on your homepage or contact page.
Phase 7: Duplicate Content
Check 19 — WWW vs non-www. Check whether your domain is accessible at both www.yourdomain.co.za and yourdomain.co.za. Both should redirect to a single canonical version via a 301 redirect.
Check 20 — HTTP vs HTTPS duplicates. Confirm that HTTP versions of all pages redirect to HTTPS.
Check 21 — URL parameter handling. If your site uses URL parameters (for filtering, sorting, or tracking), check how Google is handling them in Search Console’s URL Parameters report. Misconfigured parameters generate large volumes of duplicate content.
Prioritising Your Findings
Not all technical issues have equal impact. Prioritise fixes in this order. First, any issue preventing crawling or indexation — robots.txt blocks, sitemap errors, site-wide noindex errors. Second, Core Web Vitals failures, particularly on high-traffic pages. Third, broken internal links and redirect chains. Fourth, missing or incorrect canonical tags. Fifth, structured data errors on key commercial pages.
Download the printable version of this audit template to work through with your development team, or request a professional technical SEO audit from our team.